Amber & Steel
by electricsymphony
Summary: 'Perhaps that's the only way she'd ever love, the only way she's capable. Hatred, violence. Fire; passion bred from affection and expressed in murder, sin, with a monstrous appetite. Seemed apropos to her. That's what she was now, right' Character study of Katherine Pierce and the many men who picked which parts of her to love, and the two men who loved her whole. Crude Language.


**Notes:** Every time I stray, I always come back for more. The last week of my life has been dreadful the likes I haven't known in years, stressed in every area of life you could think of, so I picked up a bottle of Black Label Whiskey, sat down and wrote this. It was either that or go bike in the down-pouring rain. I picked the _slightly_ less dangerous option.

This is primarily a Katherine character study (I'd say at least 75 %), but its entire ride is done with an undercurrent of Damon & Katherine as a relationship.

I will now go and watch the NHL Eastern Conference Game 7 Final between the Sens & the Penguins (which, if you are at all a fan of hockey, you should too), with a much better outlook on life, and with the vigor I should have that my boys may (will) be going to the Stanley Cup Playoffs for the first time since 2007. :D

Thanks to D/K to for turning my night around (you two are the real love of my life, don't tell my boyfriend), and to any of you who actually still care about my views, opinions and obsessive love for an amazingly tragic couple some shitty writers struck down years ago because they didn't have a damn clue about the beauty they had actually created.

 **Slight Trigger Warnings** _(Just In Case):_

 _1) There is reference to Klaus having non-consensual sex in the 1400s era of human-Katherine. It does not happen in the story, but I wanted to say beforehand that it is directly discussed._

 _2) Katherine speaks very disparagingly of Christianity, but this is entirely due to the fact that it reminds her of her mother and her upbringing, and no one has ever accused Katherine of being level-headed when it comes to memories of her mother. I - and Katherine, really, in a more general sense - have no problem with religion or Christianity at all. Merely a character development-device._

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 **Disclaimer** : The Vampire Diaries, its characters, plot lines and premise belong to LJ Smith, Kevin Williamson, Julie Plec, The CW, Warner Brothers and their affiliates. I do not own anything detailed in this story, and I make no monetary profit by these writings. All rights reserved to respective parties.

* * *

His mouth tasted like steel; hard, domineering, resolute with a pinch of something so smooth, so intoxicating that she imagined the taste of Black Label Whiskey, an amber dark enough to resemble a burnt steel.

He smelled like desperation and failure, and on a primal level, she appreciated that. Some sliver of the girl she used to be enjoyed the camaraderie in that shared misery.

His cock tasted like acceptance, felt like comfort — (like home).

She hated those damn, crystal blue puppy dog eyes though. Whether she was snarling at him, teasing him, or otherwise stripped bare under the intensity of his disarming devotion, they never failed to hold admiration, awe and _love_ — _naivety_ , is a word more aptly applicable, she thinks.

"I love you," he says breathlessly, roughly pressed against the bark of an oak tree in the blackest of night; "Oh Lord, Kat — I love you more than life, more than Stefan, more than memories, brothels and wars; Dumas, my piano, my body, my soul — take them, take them all, they're yours."

It's the truth. Maybe the truest thing anyone has ever said to her.

Klaus, he only loved her in the bedroom. He only loved her when she bit him, when she growled back, when she gripped his cock harder than any of those delicate little English flowers knew how. He pulled at the nape of her neck with strangely sharp fingernails until she bled, plunged into her unsuspecting, unprepared heat until she cried, until he could lick the tears from her eyes, lapping at them like a feral dog.

Depravity, they shared. They loved depravity, but not each other. Never each other. Katherine's not even sure they _ever_ had the thinnest strand of a bond outside of a garish, golden accented four poster bed.

That was alright, though. At that point, that's all she wanted.

Christophe was gentle but tough, sweet but sardonic — _perfect_. Loved every part of her, even the unsavory ones. He cheered on in awe and pride as she went toe to toe with Milan, stepped in when his bastard half-brother went too far, shared covert, clandestine nights of alcohol, music and awful dancing with she and Samuil, held her close to his chest when the old women in the market called her a brute of a girl — when they jeered at the silly little child who thought herself more suited to fight wars for men rather than be a women to fight _for_ , and he held her back when her grip got too tight.

His dark, burnt amber eyes never held anything but admiration and awe — love, too, but at that point she hadn't quite gotten to a stage where love equaled naivety.

He was a man. A good man, but a man with just enough edge to handle all that she was, love all that she wasn't, and dismiss everything people wanted her to be.

The Lord Niklaus was a monster.

All he wanted was the spread between her legs.

Monsters weren't for loving, they were for fucking. They were for hurting, for punishing, for sweet, sweet miserable ecstasy. For reminding her who she was, for never letting her forget, for never allowing her to fester crazy ideas of one day becoming someone she had no right to be — he kept her in her place, and she appreciated that.

Even when his eyes were a sneering, scornful mockery as she expressed a desire to skip a night in bed for a night perusing the scrolls.

Even then, she owed him for the perspective he allowed her. Appreciated those reminders.

Until he declared a bounty on her life, for nothing more than blood, magic and petty revenge.

Appreciation is fickle, she learned. Her place in life wasn't quite as cut and dry as she'd hoped anymore.

She thought Elijah could be Christophe, but he wasn't. In the end, that was a good thing. He loved her mind, loved her conversation, her company and her joy, but for reasons she never quite understood, he looked at her and saw someone else. His hands trembled when hers got a little too close, his eyes were always guarded, and he flinched when the edge in her voice went too harsh.

She thinks she might've loved him, but not in the way that made for a vow, that made for a lifetime. From every look, every touch, every rise and lilt in his voice she knew he wanted so badly to want her. She wanted that too.

He clearly had a demon, a memory, a love doomed to haunt him forever.

She guessed he had a Christophe too.

Many, many hundred years later she was proven right.

At that point she didn't much care.

Stefan Salvatore loved the image, the facade, the darling little debutante with hair like a halo and the body of a goddess. He wasn't a choir boy, oh no, and, in his ignorance, he enjoyed how sharp her tongue was, how nasty her bite was, how fierce her bark was.

Until he realized just exactly what those things were, where they came from and what they _meant_.

And then he panicked, eyes full of terror.

Part of her couldn't blame him, still can't.

A monster wants, wants, and doesn't care what is put in its way.

 _"I am not your whore, my Lord, and tonight, I prefer stimulation of a different kind. Shall I send in Amelia, heaven only knows you love the terror and fear you inspire in that girl's eyes."_

 _Klaus scoffed, "Amelia is the farthest conquest from consent possible."_

 _Katerina cannot help the incredulous, insubordinate bark of laughter, it's almost instinctual — "You mean for me to believe that has ever once stopped you?"_

 _"Mhm, suppose not," he admitted, but a feral, predatory grin spread across his lips; "But I have recently found that consenting women have their..._ _ **charms**_ _."_

 _"Then I'm afraid I shall not be very charming tonight, My Lord. Deepest apologies."_

 _She walked right out, but not before the monster sneered at her, his eyes filled with scorn and mockery._

The broken soul with sins, regrets and demons wants nothing more or less than a good girl to soothe his torturous mind. She is not, has never been, a good girl.

 _"Katerina, please — come with me, I'll prepare you a room, a handmaid if you please it, a fleet of them if you wish, but do not entertain my brother tonight. He doesn't understand you, or, Lord, any woman of decency at all—"_

 _A wicked, sensuous grin is her primary reaction. "Your brother, while a boar of a man, is an adequate host. And yes, I must admit, he understands me quite well. In one_ _ **particular**_ _sense, if in no other."_

 _The painful, broken soul flinches, harsh and obvious. She lets herself feel remorse as she walks to Niklaus' quarters._

 _Then she feels naught but Niklaus' cock._

The boy with the excited eyes, sweet smile and wicked grin wants only what his father wants; a woman of worth, of good breeding and a remarkable stature. He wants Katherine _Pierce_ , the darling, the seductress and the picture of Southern perfection.

He wasn't prepared for the monster underneath.

 _"You're upset," she acknowledged, unsurprised. "But you're not afraid."_

 _"Get away from me," he whispered, horror and terror filling his lungs as he scrambled for sheets, for protection. "Get away."_

 _"It doesn't change the way you feel about me," she asserts in her compulsion, a grin on her lips._

But it does. It _did_. He couldn't handle the monster, the real reason behind the sharp tongue, the nasty bite and the fierce bark. In love with an image, oblivious to the reality.

She saw it coming, really, and would've been quite shocked to find anything else. He was young — he'd learn, in time.

The man who kisses like steel never sneered, never flinched, never looked at her like the monster under his childhood bed.

He kissed the spider veins beneath her eyes, drew blood from the sharp ferocity of her inhuman fangs, held her close to his chest whenever she allowed it, read her Dumas and Southern poetry, giddy as a little boy about the Three Musketeers and ornery as an old, sullen wartorn bastard complaining about Henry Timrod. He played her original compositions on his mother's piano, and she lost herself for moments at a time. He smiled a wicked smile as though he had fangs when he didn't, and he never looked at her with anything but awe, admiration and love.

God, she hated that cheeky lipped, ruffled haired, Confederate brute of a man.

On Christmas Eve, in a lively house full of drunks, decorations and _Christianity,_ she pondered something so ridiculously stupid _._ And, drunk on blood, whiskey and memories, she ignored everything she'd ever taught herself and stalked, determined and headstrong towards his room when Johnathon kiss-ass Gilbert stopped her at the juncture of the staircase to inquire whether she was devout.

It took every ounce of practiced willpower and control not to rip his head straight off his narrow, pussy shoulders and she told him that she was. Told him through bitter teeth that her mother had been one of the most devout women she would ever know.

She had told _Jonathon fucking Gilbert_ the most truthful thing about her mother she'd admitted to anyone in over three hundred years.

(Something like 7 months later, she watched Stefan — _Stefan_ , the boy in love with the image of a monster but scared of being one — rip apart that ridiculous excuse for a man like he was a juicy, boneless steak, and she laughed. Laughed in manic glee like she wasn't alone, like she hadn't run, like the man with the steel kisses and crystal puppy eyes was laughing with her, like the younger brother would come back to them and laugh too.)

Long before any of that, though, still drunk on whiskey, cheer and her mother's idiot religion, Gilbert left, sated with the information, and she spared a glance at the old, worn sketchbook in her hands, the seams fragile and frayed. A tiny, tiny tear shed from her eyes, and she tore the sketch of a beautiful, strong, solid woman and her peaceful baby into four angry shards and stuffed them down the tight bosom of her dress.

She contemplated whether or not she might kill Damon Salvatore.

After all, it wouldn't be first time she killed the man she loved.

Perhaps that's the only way she'd ever love. The only way she was still capable. Hatred. Violence. A fire and passion bred from affection and expressed in murder, in sin, with a monstrous appetite.

Seemed apropos to her.

That's what she was now, right?

What she chose to be?

* * *

Damon asks only two hours later whether she enjoyed his father's garish festivities.

She draws blood from his thigh, not pleasurably, but painfully. He hisses, but doesn't vocally object.

The next morning, she awakes to him staring at four broken pieces of a yellowed picture, her discarded dress at his feet.

She hits him hard enough to bruise purple before he can even voice the first word of the query.

(She doesn't know the excuse he tells his father. She finds, even years later, she can't bring herself to care.)

The final blow occurs a couple months later, as she finds herself falling deeper in love, into the dangerous quicksand of his crystal eyes, and one day, unguarded and utterly content, she pins him hard against the bench of his mother's piano after he finishes off a particularly dramatic concerto, and for a moment, she doesn't hold it back. She lets her eyes shine with their love for him, _her_ love for him, the awe, the admiration, the devotion.

His smile is wide, full of joy, awe and shock.

She doesn't know what her face reflects, and for the first time in all her life, she can't bring herself to care enough to regulate it.

Then she looks at his eyes.

And, in that room pulsing with light, love and genuine affection, they look completely, unequivocally amber, that oh so familiar but lost in time shade of burnt steel.

She recoils immediately, pulls herself away from his intoxicating shower of strong, solid steel-laced kisses and smacks him once more.

And Damon Salvatore's heart stops. His chest is empty, his lungs blackened and hollow, his eyes back to a hardened version of their normal crystal blue.

"I hope I never see you again," she says, and she really, truly means it.

She's decided she doesn't want to kill Damon Salvatore, not like she killed Christophe.

They are not — _cannot_ — be the same.

She does not love him.

 _Either of them._

* * *

Three weeks later, she's dead. Or so the whole of Mystic Falls will believe, forevermore.

Before she heads to Stefan's room to await the finale, the final curtain, the end of this elaborate charade, she's standing, eyes glazed and heart heavy, in Damon Salvatore's bedroom.

Browsing his collection of Dumas — his idol, his mentor, his dream to one day aspire to — she flickers her hand over 'The Three Musketeers', but she stops. She doesn't want to take that from him, doesn't want to take every piece of that giddy, excited little boy who fell in love with wild, wicked, moral-less vigilantes.

She already decided that she can't bring herself to kill him, after all.

She snaps 'The Count of Monte Cristo' of its shelving before she can decide otherwise, heads for the door, and pauses for one final time.

Reaching into the tight bosom of her dress, she stuffs four crinkled shards of a yellowed picture of mother and child behind the headboard of Damon Salvatore's bed.

* * *

(She never finds out if he found them before the house burnt down. This, though, this is the thing she can't bring herself to forget. That she can't train herself not to care about. Now _she's_ the monster pretending to be benevolent with the demons, the regrets, the memories and the love doomed to haunt.

Now _she's_ the monster who drowns any sliver of emotion in pleasure, pain and meaningless dances with men and women who don't know her name, who don't care about consent, connection or conversation.

She doesn't know how she became the two men she hates most in the world, but she tells herself it's okay. At least this way, she'll survive. She'll be saved from hurt, protected from grief, spared from love —

— Katherine Pierce wasn't lying when she said she hoped to never see Damon Salvatore again, because he's the only person in the world who could pull her back in from that dark, emotionless ledge, and that's a risk she knows would not fall in her favor.)


End file.
